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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24425398">Take Me Away</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapetitemort20/pseuds/lapetitemort20'>lapetitemort20</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Figure Skating RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, CowboyFic, Desert, Excessive descriptions of the sky, F/M, Falling In Love, Healing, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Soulmates, There's a HEA in here somewhere, also horses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:15:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,524</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24425398</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapetitemort20/pseuds/lapetitemort20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>At night she dreams. Dreams of her life before. Often she sees a lone wolf at the edges of these lucid moments before she loses grasp of what is real and what isn’t.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Scott Moir &amp; Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir/Tessa Virtue</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>66</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Take Me Away</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bubble32/gifts">Bubble32</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Not too sure what this is but the working title was #moodyfic. I hope you enjoy it x</p><p>Shoutout to @VM_Sigh for the germ of the idea many months ago - I've finally finished it! Thank you as always to @Red_Rover for being the best beta x</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She’s nervous, he can tell. So he hangs back, waiting for her to make eye contact, but she doesn’t. She fidgets instead.<br/> <br/>It doesn’t matter. He has time. He’ll bide it and wait.<br/> <br/>Eventually she’ll come to him. They always do. Not because he wills it. But because they can’t not. The space he offers, the care he takes. He bleeds patience, a type of grace that’s incongruous to the jaw he sometimes clenches when a restlessness takes over his body, or the spirited expression he wears when he speaks his brambled thoughts.<br/> <br/>In essence, there is a duality to him. Calm, equanimous. And yet, there is a mercurial wildness to his soul.<br/> <br/>He supposes it’s why he can do what he does.<br/> <br/> <br/>***<br/> <br/> <br/>She doesn’t even know what she’s doing here. She feels lost. It’s so far away from everything she’s used to. Everything is just a little too quiet, too wide open.<br/> <br/><em>Too much</em>.<br/> <br/>All this freedom is overwhelming. She had packed up and run. Run so far, she barely recognises her own self. But running doesn’t help, does it? You could cross the earth a hundred times, and still be in the same place inside.<br/> <br/>At night she dreams. Dreams of her life before. Often she sees a lone wolf at the edges of these lucid moments before she loses grasp of what is real and what isn’t. She wakes up crying, she has to remind herself that she’s safe now. How long has it been? No matter how many days and miles she tries to put between herself and her past, it always seems to be right there when she turns around.<br/> <br/>She tries harder.<br/> <br/> <br/>***</p><p> <br/>He writes sometimes. They call him The Poet. It’s laughable because he’s never tried to be one. Words just come and it’s as if he must, <em>needs</em>, to write them down for fear that his heart might burst should he deny it.<br/> <br/>He writes of burnt ember, dust swirls, twin stars in the night sky, a lone songbird, a babbling brook. Sometimes he dips into the darkness and writes of a need long constrained but ever simmering.<br/> <br/>He never knows if any of it is good, but he writes them anyway. Every day he chips away a little piece of his heart and lays it down upon the blank pages of his notebook. A looping scrawl the only evidence of the thoughts that run through his mind.<br/> <br/>There isn’t ever anyone to share it with. Not that there aren’t enough offers. But he doesn’t want a night to forget. He wants a lifetime to remember. Then he stops to remind himself that he has more than he needs. More than he deserves.<br/> <br/>Occasionally though, when he lies with his back on the hard ground looking up at the remote, incandescent bodies of the heavens, he wonders if lightning could strike twice.  <br/> <br/>He doesn’t let the thought linger.<br/> <br/> <br/>***<br/> </p><p>She hikes every morning. Up the jagged canyon that juts like a shadow behind her scant cabin. It’s become her ritual. Up before the sky breaks into multitudinous refractions of light. Up so that the racing thoughts in her head can be silenced.<br/> <br/>She likes it there. It might be the only time she feels peace.<br/> <br/><em>At peace</em>.<br/> <br/>She’s almost always alone. The only time she ever sees another living soul is when she’s on her way down by the time the sun has reached its zenith and tourists come up the trail. She knows no one can recognise her with her newly painted auburn locks.<br/> <br/>But this time, she hears the crunch of another’s footsteps. Maybe more. Yet the strides stop a little farther off before her anxiety can flare up like a starburst. The person doesn’t even come into view. She hears a gentle murmur, and it settles, as if knowing it isn’t solitary.<br/> <br/>Her carefully constructed seclusion remains intact. No harm will come to her today, but still she remains guarded. After a long while and little movement, she relaxes enough to take in a deep breath.<br/> <br/>First light in the desert is a sublime moment. The pale tints of the soundless dawn peek over the horizon only to flush with delicate blush, sometimes blazing bronze, gorgeous golds, crisp coppers, sending lucent colours up into the zenith. It awakens something quite extraordinary within her. She’s never been one for spiritual meditation, but this is really what it is. Right now, she’s thinking of that split-second decision that might have saved her life. Thankful for her instincts that kept her safe, even as she begged for him to stop.<br/> </p><p>***</p><p> <br/>He’s seen a lone woman when he’s out in the desert sometimes. She cuts a despondent figure against the majesty of the dramatic rocky outcrops. He only ever sees her from afar, and in the rare cases when he allows a thought of her to flit his mind, he glimpses the same fear he’s come to understand so well.<br/> <br/>It’s a fear borne from violence. Fear that sends a living thing bolting from its skin if it could, unable to trust the touch of a human any more than it could turn back the hands of time.<br/> <br/>They come from far to seek him out. Their charges usually fragile, traumatised. He doesn’t expect much, only that they let him do his work, no matter how long it takes. He doesn’t know when he started getting paid for it, maybe two years after the accident? But in truth, this was the thing that put him on the path to absolution. Maybe, after all this time, he had found what could finally allow him to forgive himself.<br/> <br/>The rains had come suddenly as they are wont to do in the desert. He was behind the wheel when he shouldn’t have been. Too drunk, too angry. She tried to stop him; they had argued. After that, all he ever remembers are flashes of memory, like the lightning that flickered overhead.<br/> <br/>The car skidding off.<br/> <br/>Hurling through the air.<br/> <br/>That he was alive.<br/> <br/>And she wasn’t.<br/> <br/> <br/>***<br/> <br/> <br/>She’s felt a presence around for months in the stark expanse of the scorched wilderness, but she finally matches it to a face when she’s out on one of her Sunday wanderings. She comes to the river often, sometimes to paint, sometimes just to be.<br/> <br/>She hears him before she sees him. The soft stamp of a horse’s hooves coming down the trail further upriver, then a gentle nicker before a standstill. He’s not close enough to notice her, not yet anyway, and she stays silent and unmoving so that he doesn’t.<br/> <br/>He turns out to be a man of lean frame, of unruly hair and unclouded eyes. She knows this because he’s taken off his hat which covers half his face. She thinks perhaps she’s seen a glimpse of him in town once before, but never out here. She doesn’t know his name, and for some reason this bothers her.<br/> <br/>Her first instinct is to run or hide, but she stays transfixed. She watches him instead as he dismounts his horse with a gentle pat and an adroit ease before walking to the river’s edge. It’s warm today, unseasonably so. She shifts uncomfortably from the spot she had chosen beneath a shaded willow, rivulet trails of sweat making her white shirt almost see-through.<br/> <br/>He has a dog with him, almost wolf-like, she thinks. It has cocked its head in her direction twice now, but the man pays it no mind. He’s talking to it, as he takes off his T-shirt. He crouches down to scoop the fresh river water with his hands, splashing it onto his face, neck and body to counter the heat. When his sun-drenched skin has cooled, he brings the water to his lips, quenching his thirst.<br/> <br/>When he finally stands, he turns to find his bearings, running his hands through his mutinous mane. She swears he’s seen her but can’t be sure, because he pivots slowly, walking back to his horse as he pulls his T-shirt back on. With a click of his tongue he’s gone, driving up a whirlwind of dust into the distance, the only trace that she even saw him at all.<br/> <br/> <br/>***<br/> <br/> <br/>The desert plays tricks on her sometimes. Not just mirages, where the heat of the air just above the arid earth ripples and flashes. But sounds too. The winds that rustle through the twisted shrubs. The scratch of a lizard scuttling away. The acoustics of the land amplified by ancient rock formations.<br/> <br/>Sometimes she hears her name being called, but she knows it’s an echo from her past. Other times it’s the smell. After the rains especially. It’s as if someone has just picked a spray of sage and placed it on her bedside table.<br/> <br/>It’s a sweet, earthy kind of scent, one she’s never come across before. Lush, yet dusty at the same time.<br/> <br/>It makes her ache. For what, she isn’t sure. But her thoughts go back to a few weeks before when she saw the man. Watched his saturnine eyes and angular body. It’s been too long since she’s had a physical response that wasn’t fear.<br/> <br/>The only time she has recalled a male presence was that night a year ago. When her face, along with her reputation, was smashed. It wasn’t the first time, but it was public, once the photos of her bruised face had spread all over the gossip rags. It was humiliating and heartbreaking.<br/> <br/>This time it’s different. This time she doesn’t think of hands that violently press her head against a car windowpane.<br/> <br/>This time, where her mind goes, her body follows. Into a burning as wide as the desert she finds herself lost in.<br/> <br/>She can almost smell her reverie. It makes her think of aged leather, raw wood, or maybe the clean, crisp crackle of lightning in the air. She wonders about the caresses those long, calloused fingers might trace along her limbs. The way he might whisper the agonies and ecstasies of the world into her skin. The rush of oblivion as they unfurl into each other.<br/> <br/>She feels a bloom of shame at this circus of misfit thoughts. She has no right to it. She doesn’t even know him. And besides, the fear and mistrust she bears would ruin everything.</p><p>Better to forget he even exists at all.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Red dust. Clouds and swirls of it.</p><p>It’s almost apocalyptic the way it blankets the desert from a far. But he knows by the tremor of the cracked earth it isn’t portending gloom. The large plumes of dust, breaking across the wastes - it can only mean one thing. In all the years he’s been here, he’s only ever seen it once.</p><p>This time he doesn’t just want to watch it. He wants to be right in the center of it.</p><p>He drives out in his beat up truck to meet the galloping storm that is gathering on the horizon. It looks like shrouded mist now, only as it advances to the steady rhythm of hoofbeats, the diffused cloud will transform from intangible to something all too temporal.</p><p><em>A stampede</em>.</p><p>The earth trembles beneath his red earth dusted boots. The sheer power of these wild horses, numbering in the hundreds, is a reminder of the spirit and resilient will of the pioneering plains. They charge untethered to the rules of men, making up their own feral canon — free to roam the way they were meant to.</p><p>They’re heading straight for him, through a narrow tract between rugged slopes. Meteoric, far more swift than he thought possible. Soon they would be upon him, then what?</p><p>He stands his ground as the wave begins to break. If he had wondered before what it would feel like to be surrounded by chaos, within the eye of a storm - <em>this is it</em>.</p><p>A moment, suspended. A breath, drawn deep. A fuse, lit like a fire in his belly.</p><p>They could hurt him, not see him, but somehow — impossibly— they avoid him. His body stays rooted to the ground, immovable, despite the forces barrelling past him.</p><p>He doesn’t feel fear. Only trust.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>It’s one of those days. The sky is a beautifully saturated blue. If she were to try to name the exact shade she couldn’t, because the air seems to hold no constancy, no more than she can hold a finger to the emotions that course through her veins.</p><p>Colours run a gamut of tinges and tones here. They are so much more brilliant and intense, deeper than she’s ever experienced. It’s the caprices of light, heat and dust that brings such a vivid richness to the arid aura around her.</p><p>She could spend hours watching the sky. It’s as if each day holds a different lifetime. No two daybreaks are the same, sometimes rose-pink in its tender rising from the deep violets of night, at times waxen like snow drops with its striations of mother-of-pearl. The end of the day bring clouds of fire — with flames of crimson, carmine, and saffron burning the horizon, ever-changing in its daily celestial tapestry. Nights too, hold their own magic. The royal purples giving way to inky indigos, brought into sharp relief by the illumination of the moon’s pale silver slice.</p><p>She’s never had her breath taken away quite so many times. The life she’s lived could hardly come close to this, and she’s lived a lot of it despite her tender years. When she first came out here, it was to escape everything she’s always known. She didn’t expect to yield to the extreme landscape, its absence of the unnecessary. Yet here she is — submitting to the desert’s mesmeric hold.</p><p>She looks up as she toils on the makeshift fencing around the cabin’s property. The owner renting it to her was in the midst of fixing it when she had appeared out of nowhere. “It’s not finished,” he had told her, but she hadn’t cared.</p><p>It’s unexpected that her work, one that had nothing to do with manual labour, has led her to this. Fame is a peculiar thing. She had basked in it long enough before the tide turned. Infamy was even more mystifying. She doesn’t know how she can go back.</p><p>She looks up. The blue of mid-day sets a sharp contrast to the shadows cast on the bronzed land. She had seen a disturbance in the distance earlier, dust churning. It spoke to her the paradox of stillness and impermanence.</p><p>Above her arcs a radiant circle of coloured light around the sun, sharp reds on the inside and diffused violet at its edges. She doesn’t know what it is yet, but later she’ll learn its name and meaning.</p><p>A solar halo, and bringing with it, great change.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>When the shroud of dust particles lift, his eyes remain closed. He’s listening to the receding thunder of hooves behind him, over the drum of his own heartbeat.</p><p>Once his pulse calms, he’s suddenly aware of a shift of movement. It’s a soft breath out against his hands. His eyes flutter open. Before him stands a chestnut mare, her nose seeking contact.</p><p>How is it that this wild being has sought him out? Why would she break free from her herd— to examine him?</p><p>He slowly lifts his hands out to touch her, a low reverberation in his chest. He’s careful but confident. She’s trusting enough, out of curiosity perhaps. It’s counter intuitive to her nature, so he knows better than to rush things.</p><p>When the moment of contact occurs, a quiet energy seeps slowly from his fingertips, melding into muscles, sinews. She leans her head against his shoulder — seeking connection willingly, once more.</p><p>“It’s alright,” he murmurs, as he allows his touch to become firmer.</p><p>There’s conviction in his gentleness. The pads of his palms leaching a warmth, one that reaches into her bones. She hasn’t been handled like this, ever. It’s unfamiliar, but welcome. The mare draws in a deep breath, letting it out barely audibly through her nostrils. It’s almost a sigh, as if in relief, expressing the release of tension her body has held on to for so long.</p><p>He can feel her heartbeat against his pulsing fingertips. It’s a wonder to him that they trust him the way they do. The hardwired response of flight doesn’t seem to apply somehow. There isn’t a secret though. It’s maybe more of a language he’s learned to speak.</p><p>It’s in the listening. The waiting. A magic that lies somewhere between pull and release.</p><p>They stay like that for an instant, and just as suddenly as she appeared to him, she whips her head and gallops away.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>There’s a rumbling in the distance. Then a clatter. It wakes her.</p><p>She can’t place the sound, until she hears a desperate whinny. She sits ramrod straight in an instant. She turns towards the shutters, listening for the sound again. It’s pelting with rain outside, perhaps it was the crash of thunder and lightning she heard.</p><p>The cry comes again, almost a scream that pierces the silence. She jumps up. The darkness is murky and she almost loses her balance out of disorientation. Once she steadies herself, she grabs on to her flimsy robe, shrugging it on quickly before she rushes to the porch to investigate. The pounding hooves start up again, and in the shadows she sees the silhouette of a horse galloping and pacing in her yard.</p><p>It’s kicking up earth loosened by rain as it rushes around, breath blowing hard. The sky is an ominous black, but her eyes have adjusted to the darkness and she sees something caught around one of the horse’s legs. The object is trailing behind the horse like a slithering tail, and the more frantic he is, the more it flails around.</p><p>It’s a strip from the plastic fencing mesh she put up last week temporarily around the periphery of the property. She should have known better and gotten help with it. How he had managed to step into it she doesn’t know. What she does know is that if she doesn’t get it off him, he’s going to hurt himself, if he hasn’t already.</p><p>“Whoa, boy…” she calls out gently, stepping closer.</p><p>The horse freezes stock still, but he’s ready to flee at a moment’s notice. The whites of his eyes roll, the arch of his neck high. He watches warily as she approaches him. His breathing rough and blustery, sweat foaming along his body. She’s almost by his side when she trips and stumbles over the belt of her robe, which she hadn’t had time to tie.</p><p>In one fell swoop, he spins and lifts his fore legs up in the air, rearing and kicking out towards her. There’s a loud crack when one powerful hoof connects with her upper body, and the force of the sudden movement causes her to lurch backwards onto the ground.</p><p>All she hears is the sound of scrambling hooves and sand. All she tastes is wet silt. All she feels is a heavy pain lancing through her right arm.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>The woman lies pallid and still, but she’s breathing. He doesn’t know how long she’s been there. Her collarbone is broken, that much is clear, by the way the bone protrudes against her skin and how her arm hangs limply to her side. He unbuckles his belt so it can act as a makeshift sling, tying it tight against her body so she cannot move her shoulder. The rain hasn’t let up so he picks her already soaked body up carefully, shifting her to her porch, hoping he isn’t jostling her too much.</p><p>When he’s sure that she isn’t hurt anywhere else on her body, he turns back to the muddied yard to find the wayward horse. It’s close to sunrise now, but with the heavy downpour and thunderclaps the terrified creature must be far gone. He’s torn between staying here or finding the horse before it hurts itself even more, so he mounts his mare, leaving his dog with a soft scratch behind her ear and a firm command to keep an eye on the woman.</p><p>When he finally returns, the raging rains have abated. Flash floods are common at this time of year—this land being so close to the arroyos— filling up the natural fluvial landforms without warning. He’d found the horse scared witless at the rushing rising waters. The nervous creature had managed to escape his box during the thunderstorm in the early hours of morning. Already wary from the earlier stampede, the crackling and singeing air just traumatised him even further. It still wore the mesh around its hind leg and was already bleeding from deep cuts.</p><p>While it had taken him some time to approach the trembling animal, he did what he always does. Wait, even through the chill that soaks his bones. After making it known he means it no harm, the horse finally allows to be examined despite its fear. It relaxes underneath his reassuring hands, as the drops of rain slow into a fine mist and the thunder echoes away from them.</p><p>There is an unused barn on the property, one he knows existed from the time of its previous owner, and this is where he settles the horse after quickly cleaning up its injuries. He’ll have to check again in the morning.</p><p>For now, another requires his attentions.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Her muscles are sore, stiff. But more than anything, there’s a throbbing stab through her shoulder. She tries to move but she can’t. Her night shift is clinging to her body in wet suction, her hair glued to her face and neck within a sticky embrace. She’s trying to figure out where she is; her eyes still closed, but the last memory is of rain and thunder and a nasty crack —the horse! Just then she hears a shifting presence close to her and the hiss and spit of fire.</p><p>She jolts up, that is, she tries to before the shock of pain causes a sharp, strangled cry to catch in her throat. Swift, strong hands gently reach out to her, and a gravelly voice speaks out.</p><p>“Hey, hey, easy there...”</p><p>Her eyes flicker open, but her head hurts from when she fell, so it takes her a minute to focus. There’s a man, kneeling before her. She attempts to recoil, yet again her body doesn’t do what it’s told.</p><p>“Shhh shhh shhhh,” he soothes tenderly, letting her go slowly with his arms up in the air. “I’m not going to hurt you. Your collarbone’s broken.”</p><p>That would explain the heaviness she feels. “The horse-?” she croaks out in confusion.</p><p>“He’s fine.“</p><p>The room starts spinning and she begins to shiver. The man adjusts the blanket around her.</p><p>“I made a fire, but it’s probably better if you can have a hot shower,” he suggests.</p><p>She shakes her head but it causes more dizziness. There’s a ball knotting in the pit of her stomach, waves of heat rippling over her - a strange combination that results in a sweltering chill - embarrassment, disquiet. But then she realises that he’s as drenched as she is, and if what he says is true, she can’t possibly get out of this soggy slip by herself.</p><p>She shuts her eyes again, a rolling nausea sweeping through her head.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>He’s putting his half dried shirt on when she awakens. He doesn’t know how long she’s watched him, but when he turns around to check on her, her gaze flits and her eyes close.</p><p>“I made some tea,” he breaks their silence.</p><p>She makes a small sound, one he takes as an assent, before he brings a small cup to her and slowly props her up against the sofa cushion. She’s still partially soaked, but at least not shivering. The warmth of the tea must bring a sense of comfort. They sit there for a while, not knowing what to say.</p><p>“You really need to get washed up and changed,” his eyes regretful. “Or you’ll catch a cold, maybe worse.”</p><p>She clears her throat, gesturing to the bathroom with her good arm, “Could you help me?”</p><p>He stands her up a little ungracefully, as they hobble over and she grabs at some clothing from a shelf.</p><p>She enters the bathroom and begins to undress, the straps of her slip falling down her arms. She falters as she tries to extricate herself out of the dress, but the grind of the broken bone against the other causes a groan of pain to spill out even as she tries to muffle the sound.</p><p>“Are you alright in there?” comes his concerned voice.</p><p>She bites down on her lips so hard, she tastes a drop of iron.</p><p>There’s a gentle rapping on the bathroom door. It’s no use, she’ll have to ask him to help her.</p><p>She slides the door open in resignation. She doesn’t need his pity but gentle hands turn her around so she faces away from him. “Here, let me.”</p><p>With only her back visible, he tenderly cups her right elbow and guides her dress off. It could be the prolonged cold or the damp, but her skin breaks out in a wave of goosebumps as the tips of his fingers flit across her arm, its shade a toasted wheat with generous sprinklings of cinnamon freckles from months of being in the searing desert heat.</p><p>Her breathing stalls, almost as if she’s afraid he might hear her. When her dress reaches the dimples in her lower back, he forces himself to tear his gaze away. She’s a woman, true and through, yet he reads the same apprehension in her body as he might a nervous filly. There’s a thrumming sense of anxiety, an energy that’s at once skittish as if she’s about to flee, yet anchored in the stubborn decision to stay put.</p><p>“I can...manage from here,” she swallows thickly.</p><p>He turns away and slides the door shut while she steps into the shower to wash off the mud in her hair and body, navigating the dull weight of her arm, just hanging there like a leaden plumb.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>“That feels better,” she announces, once dressed in a white poplin shirt and long skirt which hang at her hips. She still feels a little weak but rested at least. Clean too, fresh-faced and damp hair that wafts with the sweet scent of strawberries.</p><p>He notices how she’s folding her left arm against her body. “You’ll need a sling for that.”</p><p>She nods, padding slowly down the length of her cabin to the kitchen to fetch the first aid kit, hoping her head doesn’t get woozy.</p><p>“Have you been here long?” he calls out, looking around him with his fingers jammed into his pockets. He had been friendly enough with the owner of the property, but he hadn’t been inside the small cabin before.</p><p>But now, he’s had a bit of time to explore it — it looks like it had recently been renovated, and was surprisingly modern with its long, simple layout. One length of the cabin was lined by a bookcase that housed more books than he could count and hid the sleeping nook, bathroom and utility spaces. The other side of the cabin was punctuated by almost floor-to-ceiling windows that allowed for light and desert views. But what he liked most is the wood-burning stove fireplace that claimed dominance in the middle of the long space and a pop-out window alcove in the kitchen.</p><p>It seems to fit her. Like it’s part of the desert in its bones, but also new, and not quite of this land.</p><p>“Almost six months,” she replies, gingerly placing the kit on the small table next to the sofa where she had been lying earlier. She stands there awkwardly.</p><p>He works quickly to take the triangular calico bandage out of the first aid kit and fashion it into a sling around her elbow and neck.</p><p>“There,” he softly announces behind her, taking a discreet breath in to savour her scent. “Good as new.”</p><p>They stand like that for a moment that stretches out too long, his hands tingling from the sudden consciousness of having nothing to do.</p><p>She’s still, her breathing ragged once more. He can’t tell if it’s fear this time, or some other feeling. He’s thrown off his instincts around her. Give him a stampede and he’ll survive it, but this? It’s a different energy entirely. Like being caught in an undertow.</p><p>“I haven’t thanked you properly for helping me,” she breaks the silence, turning around.</p><p>“I was looking for the horse,” he confesses, looking for a way to put some space between them. She’s too close for comfort. He’s spent too much time alone now, he wonders if maybe this is what it feels like for a horse to be approached by him. “The wild horses yesterday, then the storm. He escaped his stall.”</p><p>The horse. Of course. “Did you find him?” Her memory is a little fuzzy. The stampede also explains the commotion she saw in the distance.</p><p>“He’s safe in your barn,” he replies, walking toward the bookshelves. “I thought you needed taking care of first. But I’m no doctor, you should get your arm X-rayed.”</p><p>“If it’s a broken collarbone, there’s not much that can be done that you haven’t already.” What she doesn’t say is how familiar she is with broken bones.</p><p>“Still. Maybe rule out a concussion?”</p><p>She knows all about them too. “I’ll sleep on it,” she rushes out too quickly, then adds in a softer, muted tone, “but thank you. Again.”</p><p>He nods, then looks at the titles lining the library.</p><p>“Is he alright?” She remembers how he had been scared of something, possibly even injured.</p><p>“A bit cut up from getting caught in some fencing mesh, but I spent some time patching him up,” he assures.</p><p>She frowns. That bloody fencing. Then she says the first thing on the tip of the tongue, her curiosity getting the better of her. “Do you usually go around the desert fixing things?”</p><p>He makes a soft snorting sound. “You could say that. I rehabilitate horses. Usually rescues, abused or neglected. He’s one of them.”</p><p>It explains the rare elements of earned peace and tender gravity about him. And yet, there’s so much more. Something about him whispers of wide open spaces. A lot like the desert she find herself inexplicably drawn to — a liminal threshold where the brokenness inside her might start healing.</p><p>“Can I—“ she starts.</p><p>“I should—“ he overlaps.</p><p>She laughs at their awkwardness. It’s a sound he doesn’t expect. It makes the corners of his mouth turn up unbidden.</p><p>“Do you want to go see him? I mean, if you feel alright. I should take him home - he’s had a pretty eventful time.”</p><p>She goes to slip on a pair of boots.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>They walk across the courtyard to the barn where they come across his mare in an empty stall and the wolf-dog she had seen with him from the day at the river. Something about it reminds her of the wolf in her dreams.</p><p>“That’s Shaman,” he introduces after a sharp whistle. The dog turns to look at them from her spot on the floor with disinterest, only lifting her nose in the air as he walks past her to another stall. “And this is Lucy.”</p><p>“But Lucy’s a he?” she wrinkles her brow in confusion.</p><p>“Short for Lucifer, the Bringer of Light, also known as the Devil. Apt, considering what he did to you.”</p><p>She laughs again, “I like it.” It’s the perfect name for a black horse.</p><p>She watches him interact with Lucy while she stands away to the side. It’s like observing a completely different animal from the wrathful creature in the early morning hours. At first nervous and wary, the dark steed stands at the back of the pen, but soon approaches. It’s not so much what Lucy does that surprises her, but what the man—she doesn’t even know his name—doesn’t.</p><p>He doesn’t move, although he seems quite relaxed. He doesn’t speak, and yet she feels a latent conversation between them. He doesn’t reach out, because he’s simply waiting for the horse to make the connection.</p><p>When it is made, then and only then does he run his fingers across the horse’s powerful neck and body, speaking to him in hushed, dulcet tones. Lucy allows him to pick up and examine the injured hind foot, barely even blinking. When the examination is done, he tucks his head into the man’s neck and shoulder, and releases a long, shuddering breath.</p><p>She marvels at this entire exchange, which has lasted no more than 15 minutes. There is a sense of certitude that passes through them. They almost seem to be comforting each other. A thought flits into her head for just a moment—what if she had had that in her life? Would she be in this mess, running away from the outside world?</p><p>“That was impressive,” she says quietly, when he exits the stall.</p><p>“It’s like any language,” he smiles with his eyes. “You just have to learn to speak it.”</p><p>“It looks more like poetry to me.”</p><p>His gaze transfers from the tack he’s gathering, holding her green eyes steady. She nearly falters under the weight of his scrutiny.</p><p>“I’m sorry. What I meant was—” her throat goes dry.</p><p>He shakes his head, fixed hazel stare piercing her. Almost as if she’s seen into the depth of him, and he might try to do the same. “Don’t apologise.”</p><p>“I—” and she starts to feel a little winded. It’s not her arm, or even her head. He hasn’t touched her, but it’s a palpable sucker punch to her guts.</p><p>He jolts to her side, ready to anchor her but careful not to put any weight against her arm. “Are you alright?”</p><p>Hey body sags in relief against his. “Too much excitement, I think,” offering a weak smile.</p><p>“I don’t feel right leaving you like this.”</p><p>“No, no, you should go. Lucy needs proper medical care. I’ll be fine,” she insists, even as the wave of breathlessness washes over her again. She’s suddenly aware of how close he is to her, and his scent—subtle notes of rain and resinous crushed juniper.</p><p>He presses his lips together in a stubborn line. “I’ll go, but only if I can come back and check in on you later.”</p><p>She doesn’t answer, but when he rides off of the property, she finds herself hoping he’ll look back. It’s strange that she should know the names of the animals that accompany him but not his own. Yet she hasn’t exactly offered hers either.</p><p>Perhaps they’ll learn them soon enough.</p><p>Just before he disappears around the bend he sends a glance back towards her solitary figure. It isn’t the last he sees of her.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>He returns that evening.</p><p>She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t waiting for him to show. So when she hears the throttle of a truck she’s not sure how to quell her racing pulse. She’d been sitting on her porch swing, watching the last tendrils of the sun flicker across the skies as she contemplated the day. In that ruddy last glow, she watches him approach with a crunch under his boots.</p><p>“Ma’am,” he takes off his hat. His wayward dark hair is damp, swept away from his forehead as if he’s just jumped out of the shower.</p><p>“Hello again.”</p><p>He gestures at the fading wisps of incandescent twilight. “Beauty, eh?”</p><p>She nods, studying his profile. He’s wearing a dark plaid shirt with a white t-shirt beneath, dark jeans and scuffed boots. Both remain quiet for a while as they watch the eventide fall around them.</p><p>“I used to run and chase the last light when I was a little boy,” he shares, his voice slipping into a warm memory. “I wished sometimes for the sun to take me away.”</p><p>“Fly this girl as high as you can, into the wild blue…” she softly sings.</p><p>A smile crinkles his eyes at the sound of her voice, and the rawness of its timbre. “Something like that.”</p><p>Her lips curl involuntarily.</p><p>There’s a chorus of desert crickets weaving a lush blanket of sound through the night air. Before this, she thought such a desolate space to be silent, when in fact she’s learnt it’s teeming with life.</p><p>“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asks.</p><p>He observes her quietly, “Maybe.”</p><p>Again, that breathless feeling. “Would you like a drink?” she points to a small ice box beside the swing.</p><p>“Sure,” he shrugs easily, moving to open it before stopping suddenly. “Were you expecting company? I don’t want to impose.”</p><p>“No!” she starts, surprising herself. “I mean…Just, you said you would...stop by.”</p><p>“Oh.” He breaks into a grin.</p><p>“To check. Not that I was waiting. I sit out here sometimes...there’s not much in the form of socialising here...” she’s rambling from nerves now.</p><p>“You’re right. I did say I was coming back,” he soothes. “I usually keep my word.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“So,” he closes the ice box. “I don’t drink beer, but thank you.”</p><p>She doesn’t ask why so she holds her arm instead, tucking it up against her body like a broken wing. In many ways that’s how she feels. The physical representation of her spirit.</p><p>“Birdie,” he murmurs, after a while.</p><p>She looks at him questioningly.</p><p>He shakes his head. “You look like a bird.”</p><p>“Birds are free. This one doesn’t fly.”</p><p>“Well, that’s because your wing is hurt.” It’s a casual comment that’s carried by certainty. “May I?”</p><p>She drops her chin slightly, and he shifts from where he was standing to sitting next to her on the swing.</p><p>“Let’s see,” he unties the sling gently.</p><p>She winces from the stiffness but also the sharp pain that flashes across her collarbone.</p><p>He presses lightly against the muscles in her shoulder with a practiced ease. “You’ll need to move your arm regularly or you’ll lose mobility. Even if it hurts.”</p><p>“No wonder they trust you,” she muses, not wanting to admit that she’s taking more than a little pleasure in the contact.</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>“The horses. You have a tender touch,” her eyes lift up to his.</p><p>He tells her it’s his work, without a trace of vanity or arrogance. But then his gaze strays from her eyes to her mouth, and suddenly the air is thick and choked between them.</p><p>“I...should go,” his hands still, and he stands abruptly.</p><p>She hides her disappointment with a bright smile. She’s not sure what she wanted him to do, but she felt a transference of some kind between them. “Thank you, for keeping your word.”</p><p>He’s already walking toward his truck, but before he jumps in, he hesitates. “I’ll come by tomorrow, if that’s alright?”</p><p>She smiles in reply, and as he drives off he tips his hat to her.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>He returns the day after that. Then the next.</p><p>He keeps coming around until her collarbone heals, and beyond. Each time he finds a reason to justify his presence. Each time she doesn’t try to explain it.</p><p>Their initial self-consciousness wears down into some version of comfort. They eventually learn each other’s names, although she gives him her second. The one that isn’t known, that isn’t up in lights.</p><p>He prefers to call her Birdie instead. She likes it.</p><p>She goes to watch him work with horses sometimes, and he finishes up the fencing on the property. She drinks in the sight of him in his labours as she would cold water after a blistering desert day. But he never seems to be drained, it’s almost as if he relishes the beauty in the process of becoming. The reward in the toil, in every bead of sweat.</p><p>They graduate a little later to him offering to read her some of his poetry, and in return she turns them into melodies on her guitar, ones that haven’t found voice on the stage, and the only audience is him, Shaman, firelight and the stars above.</p><p>The wolf-dog remains cooly distant and inaccessible to her, almost as if she’s his shadow and guardian spirit. One that observes and knows all. There’s a wild and instinctive beauty about her—in the rough, mottled coat; the fierce intelligence of her eyes.</p><p>She wonders if she is the wolf from her dreams, ever present but out of reach, pointing her to some unseen direction.</p><p>However remote her relationship to the lupine, it’s completely the opposite with this bronze-eyed male. They’ve somehow formed an unnamed bond and a sort of ritual, speaking their half truths late into the night. It’s chaste and proper, and yet there’s something infinitely more potent running beneath their hallowed exchanges. It feels like it’s building up to something, the way he stood waiting for the stampede to break over him only three months before.</p><p>It’s a breath, a glimpse into what if, a delicate moment of found and shared solace.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>The fragile balance they’ve carefully created comes crashing down all the same when he asks her a question. One she didn’t think he’d ask. One he can’t help but ask.</p><p>“How long are you going to hide out here for?”</p><p>There’s a long pause before she replies, “What makes you think I’m hiding?”</p><p>“Aren’t you?”</p><p>The light from the dimming fire between them casts dark shadows against his face. It accentuates his features, and in that moment, were she not distracted by his question, she might have found him so achingly beautiful that she could not help but kiss him and offer herself up to him. He’s become the calm in her storm these short months, simply by his steady presence alone. But right now, she feels like she’s on the precipice of something.</p><p>“Aren’t we all?” she deflects with a question.</p><p>He doesn’t reply, instead moves away from the fire to find North East. He has his secrets too; old scars that bleed like new scabs if you pick at them long enough.</p><p>She joins him on the hard earth with saddles as their pillows, staring upwards into the dark night, in all its incomprehensible mystery. They had ridden out together, wanting to take advantage of the waning crescent moon. It’s supposed to rain fire in the sky tonight - the Perseids due to make their annual appearance. She’s never seen them before. She didn’t even know the stars could glister like this.</p><p>It’s beautiful is what it is. The shining ultraviolet of the Milky Way juxtaposed against the velvet black of night. Even without the meteor showers, the immensity and weight of time is humbling.</p><p>“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust,” he quotes.</p><p>“Rumi,” she sighs wistfully.</p><p>They watch, waiting for the fall.</p><p>After a time she counters with, “How should we like it were stars to burn, with a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be—”</p><p>“—Let the more loving one be me,” he completes. “Auden.”</p><p>They could do this forever. The poetic colloquy between them, not just in words, but in a lingering look, in the sentiment of a gesture. There had been very little gentleness in her life, but here under the vastness of the desert sky, it is bounteous.</p><p>Over the past months, he had chosen his words sparingly, but it is in this moment that he tells her his story, without filter. He speaks of the love that he forfeited, at his own hands. That they were married too fast, and lost even sooner. Of how he doesn’t know if he can forgive himself. Maybe that he doesn’t even deserve happiness.</p><p>Her heart bleeds for him, wanting to share in his pain with her own ache. But she can’t find the words to begin for fear of breaking the dam that has held her up this whole time.</p><p>“You don’t have to say anything,” he continues when he’s met with silence. “I know your name isn’t the one you told me, not really. I know you left the city to escape. You were known there, but someone hurt you. Maybe very badly, so you ran. How am I doing so far?”</p><p>All her emotions are rising into her throat, she can’t get any words past them. He had guessed what she found so difficult to admit, even to herself.</p><p>“You’re afraid what they will think of you, so you conceal yourself out here so you don’t have to deal with everything…inside.”</p><p>He hears her muffle a sob. She doesn’t cry from fear, but perhaps relief that she doesn’t need to guard herself any longer. She weeps softly as he reaches for her hand.</p><p>When she’s finally composed, she confesses, “I’m more myself with you than I’ve ever been.”</p><p>“I know,” his fingers linger against hers, an undeniable yearning between them. “But you aren’t free.”</p><p>She looks at him now, really focuses. Not the furtive glances that she would dart when she was afraid he might guess who she was, but a steady gaze that is an attempt at being brave. “I want to be.”</p><p>He exhales like his lungs have been emptied of all air. “Your wing is mended. You can slay the Gorgon just like he did,” he points up to the meteor shower descending from Perseus.</p><p>She looks up to watch the fiery blaze crossing the midnight sky. He’s right. She knows now what she must do.</p><p>Her eyes find his once more, intense green and hopeful, even in the flickering darkness. In them he sees her bid for freedom.</p><p>It could be enough.</p><p>Every unsaid word, every lost moment, every suspended thought hangs between them like the sword of Damocles. He tilts his mouth to brush against her lips anyway.</p><p>And the dam finally bursts.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>When she awakes, it’s past late morning. She finds his limbs enveloped around her—all the moments when they had barely touched or spoken, unshackled at last.</p><p>They had ridden back to her place in silence, but then he had made love to her in the hours just before dawn with as much tenderness and fury that her body could take. He took his time; each kiss, each touch scoring her flesh and bones so they might reveal the secrets of her soul that her voice simply could not. In return, she had milked him of every emotion he didn’t know he had been clutching on to, offering him mercy in her depths.</p><p>It would be easy to stay like this. His chest solid beneath her head, breath steady, skin still liquid warm from their intimacies. She hadn’t felt fear with him, not once. Salt tears pool beneath her lids and she blinks them away before they can be interpreted as regret.</p><p>He stirs slowly, kissing the blood fire crown of her head.</p><p>She whispers his name and he replies by flitting his fingers in circles up and down her body, still sore and aching from their union. His mouth finds hers as he pulls her closer to him. She surrenders into his kiss, as if she had any power to resist, but it’s not the same.</p><p>He shifts to rest his head on his palm, taking her all in. Something has changed in her, doubt no longer thrumming in her veins. “You‘re going, aren’t you?”</p><p>She doesn’t know how he is able to read her so well, but he does. Perhaps it’s the intrinsic nature of his work, the non-verbal communication he relies on. “Yes.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“Okay?”</p><p>“One more day.” It’s a gentle request.</p><p>Then he kisses her once more, and they take their fill of each other; the world and its possibilities made new with every sweet rise and fall between them.</p><p>She leaves the next day the same as she arrived—without a whisper. She didn’t bring much when she came, so she doesn’t take much when she goes.</p><p>He tries hard not to go back to where he first met her, but the pull is much too strong. He knows he won’t find anything. Nothing, but the stark silence of the earthen courtyard. The rusty turning of the steel windpump. The bare boned cabin with no poetry or music left inside its reclaimed timber walls because she is gone.</p><p>He is prepared to face the emptiness of the sweeping wilds without her presence. And yet—the two nights she gave him, and the months they shared before that—saturate his being even as the days stretch into months.</p><p>But soon she’s gone longer than she was there to begin with and he wonders if she had even been there at all.</p><p>Then he sits beneath the light of the not yet stars, and he feels the desert breathe of her. How it beats of her.</p><p>So he waits.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>The rush of the city is far behind her. She’s ready to leave all of it, now that she’s faced down the man who fractured her body and spirit. The trial hadn’t been easy, but what in life is? Letting go of the past was the hardest thing, because it meant that she had to break her own heart, or whatever left of it that was whole. It meant admitting to herself that she had held on for far too long, and for not enough. That she had been wrong about what love meant, that she had romanticised it all in her mind, made excuses for it, finally learning that real love wasn’t meant to hurt.</p><p>It’s been two years to the day since she first came out to the desert. So much has changed. She’s gone through so many different iterations of herself since she began this journey back to her. <em>She’s more herself than she has ever been</em>.</p><p>And now, with a full soul and a hungry heart she finds herself returned to the harsh elements that stripped her bare. Back to where the sky stole her breath and a man with dark eyes and gentle hands taught her how to trust again.</p><p>She climbs up a trail along the red, rocky outcrops. Up where she can watch the light vibrate and scintillate the air with its intense colours, setting fire to the rust earth below. Up to absorb the shafts of golden glow, deepening into hazy bands of orange, atoms weaving their own stories of resilience before slipping into the dusk.</p><p><em>She had missed this</em>.</p><p>Magic hour, last light— whatever it’s called—speaks to her heart of brilliance and beauty even when faced with certain darkness.</p><p>There’s a sound of familiar footfall nearby. There could be only one person who knew where to find her. Who might have guessed her dark hair from the rich russet she had last worn.</p><p>Then she hears a voice, warm like the rays of the sun that have just dipped beneath the horizon. “Did you find what you were looking for?”</p><p>She turns around, observing him quietly although her heart is leaping. “Maybe.”</p><p> </p><p>~ FIN ~</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Let me know what you loved, either in the comments or at @lapetitemort20 x</p><p>Fun fact: Title of the fic comes from Dixie Chicks - Cowboy Take Me Away, which was on heavy rotation while writing this.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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